Congrats to the Jets. The punks leave New England stunned.

Hot, damn.

Hard to pick against Tom Brady, but still…

Let’s Go Jets!

American Comfort:

Rich Lederer, the man who helped get Bert Blyleven elected to the Hall of Fame, set the Internet community back years this week when he got his tits lit in a Twins Fantasy Camp game. Way to go, Rich. It’s back to the basement for you. When will these Nerds ever learn?

Congratulations are in order for the Tampa Bay Rays, who are on the verge of acquiring one Kyle Farnsworth for the low, low price of, per Buster Olney, 3.25 million dollars plus an option.

Oh, where do we start. How about with evil maniacal laughter?

Now that you’ve gotten that out of your system, I think this is both good and bad news for the Yankees. Good news because it is entirely possible that the Rays will call in Farnsworth to try to protect close leads, which is likely to mean a lot of heartbreaking late Rays losses on towering home runs. Bad news because now it would be a really, really bad idea for New York to start any kind of scuffle with Tampa. Yankee batters better be nice and respectful and not crowd the plate.

In fact, Farnworth has pitched very well against the Yanks on multiple occasions, and had some very good years along with his bad, and supposedly has a new approach these days that involves throwing fewer  sliders that don’t slide directly down the middle of the plate… and so he may not end up being a terrible pickup for the Rays. Conceivably.

Nevertheless, [rubbing hands together sinisterly] MWA HA HA HA HA HA!

Trevor Hoffman, the all-time saves leader, is retiring. He wasn’t great in the post-season but that doesn’t undermine his excellence. Plus, he had a beautiful delivery, and that hellacious change-up.

Happy Trails, Hoss.

Ali and Cosell: A Good Combination.

[Picture by Boxing Insider.com]

photo from laobserved.com

Last week Dodgers owner Frank McCourt met with MLB executives, per the LA Times — though not with Bud Selig personally, who presumably was too busy writing Petrarchan sonnets about Abner Doubleday – and discussed his plans to keep the Dodgers, after a judge tossed out the post-nuptial agreement between him and his ex-wife Jamie that would have given him full control over the team. The LA Times article points out that Selig has the power to veto any kind of TV deal, financing plan from MLB, or partenership agreement that McCourt might come up with — and the Dodgers owner will likely need one of those things to hang onto his team and pay off his former wife.

Which brings up once again the MLB Commissioner’s baffling power when it comes to deciding exactly who gets into baseball’s 100% male, 96.67% white, 100% non-Mark Cuban ownership club. In how many other industries do a group of competitors get together and decide who else gets to compete against them? Let me rephrase that – in how many other industries do they do that legally? As much as I love baseball I can’t think of any rational justification for why they still have an anti-trust exemption. Not the NFL, not the NBA – but baseball, see, is not a “commercial enterprise”. Right.

Not that I can blame Selig for being irate at McCourt, a man who, with his ex-wife, spent millions on the Rasputin-esque Russian  “mystic”/”physicist” Vladimir Shpunt (and if you somehow haven’t read about Shpunt before, please, do yourself a favor and dig in – it warms these cold winter days), among many other less amusing screw-ups. It might in fact be in the Dodgers’ best interest if Selig forced McCourt out, but how is that right or fair? I’m particularly skeptical since it was Selig and the owners who decided to let McCourt buy the team in the first place. Don’t you just hate it when you screen someone carefully to make sure they belong in your exclusive country club, and then they go and have a messy public divorce! The nerve! And after all you did for them…

It’s safe to say that the country has bigger problems at the moment, and baseball has gotten along all right — more or less — for this long with its rigged ownership system in place. But something so blatantly unfair can hardly be good for the sport long term. Every once in a while you get a iconoclast like Bill Veeck who manages to get into the club and shakes things up from the inside – you could even say Steinbrenner did that, in his own way and for better or worse – but those guys are few and far between and getting fewer, as the amount of money needed to buy a team gets staggeringly high. Baseball deserves better than to be entrusted to a closed-off group of  crusty old multimillionaires who vote like sheep on who gets to join their ranks. I am not advocating Vladimir Shpunt for Dodgers owner — although actually that would be completely awesome, but… right, no. But this is a system that’s about 100 years out of date and ripe for some modernization.

I don’t I don’t like handling birds–I always think of the Sledgehammer video–but roasting a chicken is something any self-respecting cook should know how to do. I haven’t done it in years and my mission this winter is to become competent at roasting a chicken. I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of weeks and tonight is the night–the bird in the oven as we speak and will be done in time for the Jets game.

I’ll let you know how it turns out. And speaking of boids, how about them Seahawks giving the Saints hell through the middle of the third quarter?

[Photo Credit: Sarah Shatz via Food 52]

I freely admit I am so starved for baseball happenings that I actually did a news search just now for “baseball” –as if I wouldn’t have read about it already, on a blog or Twitter, if anything big went down. Aside from the Matt Garza trade (good news for the Yanks this season, probably, but nothing I can get too excited about) there ain’t nothing going on today. Except Brian Cashman is talking more and more like some kinda internet zealot. Adam LaRoche is finalizing his deal with the Nationals. Okay.

Unfortunately what I did turn up, like some gross bug under a rock, is the story over at Radar Online that a new reality show about baseball groupies is being developed. Baseball Annies are now being cast, with the idea of filming in Arizona during spring training. I’m not much of a reality TV fan — I’m too easily embarrassed on behalf of other people — and doubt I will watch this, unless I have to write about it. Anyone with half a brain realized many, many years ago that the vast majority of baseball players sleep around, and I really couldn’t care less since I am not married to, nor dating, a baseball player; that’s between them and their significant others and as long as everyone’s a consenting adult, hey, not my concern. The entire subculture has always seemed deeply depressing, though, and this newest cringe-inducing exploitation-fest is doing nothing to change that impression:

“The girls will go to any lengths to go to games and practices with the goal of sleeping with and getting material things from athletes as a notch under their belt,” the source told RadarOnline.com exclusively.

Ooh, an EXCLUSIVE about soul-suckingly shallow groupies! Great job, RadarOnline.com. Also:

The show will focus on the women and their ‘cleat-chasing’ lifestyle more than the players and their participation, added the source.

Well, of course. Why deal with the legal and societal repercussions of showcasing popular men behaving badly when you can just vilify the less wealthy and famous women who, inexplicably, are volunteering for this? Not that they won’t deserve vilifying, most likely, and no one can go on a show like “Cleat Chasers” and not expect to come out looking horrible.

I’m not someone who bemoans the decline of humanity, because I think humanity has always been pretty messed up, and even a show as tasteless as this is still better than say burning a bunch of people at the stake every time you get freaked out by an eclipse, but still.

AP Photo

In this confusing, turbulent world of unceasing change, it is always reassuring to know that a few precious things will always stay the same. Among these rocks in the surf  is Gary Sheffield, who as you may recall is 42 years old now and did not play last year, but met with Joe Madden at the Winter Meetings to explore the idea of making a comeback with the Rays. Apparently the Rays never followed up on this, with the result that Sheff is “99.9%” sure he’ll retire, and also, of course, is feeling “a little disrespected.”

As you’ll probably recall, Gary Sheffield feels disrespected when the wind blows, or when a bunny looks at him the wrong way. Not to get all Psych 101 on you but I always figured that was how he kept himself motivated. And I imagine he could be a real headache to manage, but I always loved watching the man hit. He had the perfect at-bat music the last year or two of his Yankee career (Ludacris’s “Move, Bitch,” a song I often wish I could blast while trying to push through the thick swarms of slow tourists outside my office building), and it would pump up the crowd while hapless third-base coaches and players cowered as far from the likely path of his scalded liners as they respectably could.

If this is the end for Sheff I wish him all the best, and I hope he finds a good post-playing outlet for all that competitiveness and bad-ass energy.

In a story that received a good bit of attention in the blogosphere, ESPNEWS anchor Will Selva was suspended indefinitely on Dec. 30 for plagiarism. He had introduced a story on the air about the Los Angeles Lakers, using the words of Orange County Register columnist Kevin Ding as his own, without attributing the source.

Ding called Selva out, an investigation followed, and the Worldwide Leader took swift and decisive action.

Selva apologized in a statement:

“I made a horrible mistake and I’m deeply sorry. I did not live up to my high standards or ESPN’s. I sincerely apologize for my sloppiness, especially to Kevin Ding, viewers and colleagues. In my 15 years in broadcast journalism, nothing like this has ever happened and I will make every effort to ensure it won’t happen again.”

Sounds sincere and contrite. But do you believe Selva? Suspended after it was proved he was a fraud, how can we believe “nothing like this has ever happened” before? Why should we? Because Selva’s statement is written, are we simply jumping to conclusions? Are we interpreting his tone correctly? If he was an anchor with more name recognition, would we be more inclined to believe him? Whatever the case, Selva is going to have a hard time recovering from this incident. An incident that could have been avoided if he simply said, “Kevin Ding of the Orange County Register said it best in his Sunday column…”.

Look no further than Mike Barnicle, Jayson Blair, and Judith Miller to see how the combination of plagiarism and fabricating stories has affected writers’ careers. Barnicle continued to work, and four years ago signed on as a columnist at the Boston Herald. Blair got a book deal soon after his flap at the New York Times. Miller, whose reporting on weapons of mass destruction was found to be inaccurate and worse, false, and later served jail time for her refusing to testify before a grand jury in the Valerie Plame case, has recently landed at the Conservative magazine and website Newsmax as a columnist.

Those scribes got second chances. Does Selva’s situation merit one?

The journalist in me says no. There isn’t any circumstance that should result in his reinstatement. Selva violated the most basic principle of the craft and he should be fired, not suspended. The empathic side of me, however, says yes, but that second chance isn’t deserved. It has to be earned, like a series of trials it takes to regain trust in a friend, lover or spouse who breached trust in some way.

Plagiarism is dangerous territory. I know from personal experience. I wrote a column in this space during the 2009 season where I analyzed how different beat writers were covering the same game. My goal was to show how different writers from different papers see the game through different prisms to ultimately craft similar stories. Now, I know from being in press boxes that while the writers sit in close quarters, no one is looking over anyone’s shoulder with that look that says, “Hey, what did you put down for Number 3?” Every writer is in his or her own zone, headphones in to check accuracy of quotes on the recorder, scrambling like hell to make deadline. The chorus of clickety-clacking on laptop keyboards tells you as much. Invariably, by pure coincidence, angles will be similar, certain quotes or sections of quotes will be similar, and in some cases, even certain phrases and word choices describing the action will be either similar or exact. Again, this is pure coincidence. And it’s rare that it happens.

It just so happened that in my analysis, I noticed an exact phrase appearing in different game stories from two writers representing two different papers. In jest, I wrote that one of the writers “copied off (the other writer’s) paper.” It was a regrettable choice of words on my part, and I wish like hell I could take it back. But if there’s one thing I learned in my Intro to Communication Theory class during my freshman year of college, it’s that communication of any kind is irreversible. I went for the laugh with the “copied off his paper” line; maybe I got it, maybe I didn’t. What I got was an e-mail in my personal inbox the next morning from one of the writers. I did not anticipate the content of the note, and I was stunned.

Point blank, the writer asked me if I was accusing him of plagiarism, and if I was, I’d better be ready to prove it.

(more…)

Big up Steve Buckley, longtime Boston sports writer, who came out today in a column for the Boston Herald. Wonderful news. It’s sad but true that homosexuality is the last great taboo in American sports. It shouldn’t be, but there you have it.

One day, there will be openly gay jocks in this country and somehow the Earth will keep turning.

As my wife said to me this evening, “Where you put your dick has nothing to do with your ability to hit the ball a country mile with millions of people watching.”

Back in 2003, I spoke with Rob Neyer about homosexuality in baseball:

BB: I’ve been talking about what kind of player it will take to come out of the closet, and I’ve think, like Jackie Robinson, it will have to be a man of great character as well as great skill.

Neyer: Yeah, I think that’s right. And in fact, I think the comparison is apt. I got some flak from some people today in response to my column. I said the first gay player to come out would be a hero, to me at least, along the lines of Jackie Robinson and Curt Flood. People said, You can’t compare being gay to being black. Okay, fine, so it’s not exactly the same thing, although one could argue that people are born gay, or at least with the propensity toward being gay, just as you are born black. But my point was, though I didn’t make it explicitly, is that the thing that Todd Jones is saying about a gay player is the exact same thing that was being said about a black player in 1947. What he’s saying is, Oh no, I don’t have anything against gays personally, I just don’t want them around here because they’ll be a disruption. It’s the same kind of crap that members of the Dodgers were saying in 1947. It’s a bunch of bullshit. He doesn’t want to have to deal with it, that’s what it comes down to. The point of my column was that Todd Jones should be able to say whatever he wants to, without fear of being fined or suspended.

BB: Or getting killed by the P.C. Police.

Neyer: Exactly. But I also made the point that I think he’s full of shit. It’ll be a great day when a gay player comes out. And eventually—I hope in my lifetime—there will be lots of gay players, and nobody will give a damn.

BB: Buster Olney told me that he thinks the first gay player will probably have to be an established star—although he made the point that Billy Bean was in as good a situation as he’d seen for someone to come out, with the Padres in the early ’90s. Do you feel it would take an established star to be able to get away with it?

Neyer: I do. I think you have to have the combination of being a great player and also having the personality to withstand all the hassle. If you weren’t a good player it would become very awkward for a couple of reasons. One, the other players would not be as accepting if you are the 25 guy on the roster. Now if you are the best player on the team, or close to it, your teammates are going be a little more likely to say, Okay we can live with this guy the way the Dodgers did with Robinson. It would also make it much tougher on management if the player wasn’t great. It’s going to cause a disruption; there is no question about that. The media circus is going to be crazy when it happens. And the team will be put in this really awkward position. What if the guy is the 25th guy, and he really didn’t deserve a spot on the club? But they wanted to send him out. People will say you are only sending him out because he’s gay. And nobody wants to be put in that position, no team wants to be put in that position.

BB: Nobody wants to be the Pumpsie Green of the movement.

Neyer: That’s right. For all parties considered I think it’s going to work better if it’s a great player, or at least a good player. I think having him be the back-up shortstop could be a problem.

BB: One of the questions I have is what would a player stand to gain by coming out? Is it simply a guy saying, “I don’t want to live a lie anymore?”

Neyer: Or again it could be a guy who thinks this is important for other gays. That’s talking about the principle. I don’t know if it’s really our job to distinguish between motivations. It’s certainly more admirable if the player is doing it out of a sense of justice as opposed to a sense of “I just can’t live a lie anymore.” Either one is admirable I suppose, and we should be sympathetic to either position. But if there is something larger involved than just, “I can’t do this anymore unless I tell people I’m gay,” it would be meaningful. It’s not a selfless act in that situation, it’s more of a selfish act, which I can certainly sympathize with, and would cheer for him as well, but it wouldn’t be the same as somebody who would do it because he felt that he had a responsibility to make things better.

BB: I assume that there are gay ballplayers just like there are gay accountants. Do you think that teams and the writers who cover those teams know or suspect that some guys are gay, but just don’t want to deal with it publicly?

Neyer: I do think that’s the case. From what I understand, and I don’t know this to be a fact, because it’s been a while since I read anything about it, but I do think that there were people who knew that Glenn Burke was gay when he played for the Dodgers. I think there are gay ballplayers. I have no doubt about that, whatsoever, and I suspect that some of those players are either known to be gay by their teammates or are suspected to be gay. I think that it’s out there; I just don’t think people want to have to deal with what happens when you make it public. Think about all of the players who really aren’t going like you if you’re gay. They are certainly out there. I honestly believe that if a player came out, for the most part he’d be accepted by his teammates. I really think that. Would it be tough? Sure. Would there be some teammates that wouldn’t talk to the guy? Yeah. But you know what? Every clubhouse has guys that don’t get along now. It would just be a different reason not to get along. But for the most part I think they would be accepted, just like we accept gays that we know in our profession. Just like people grew to accept Jackie Robinson. Some of them didn’t like him, and didn’t go out to dinner with him, but they accepted him as a teammate. I think it would work exactly the same way in baseball with a gay player if someone gave it a chance.

BB: Someone’s going to be the Pee Wee Reese and go out and put his arm around the guy.

Neyer: That’s right. It sort of has a different connotation I suppose.

BB: Maybe he’ll squeeze his ass instead.

[Photo Credit: Lucius Beebe Memorial Library]

Your new Hall of Famers:

Roberto Alomar — and (at long last, love) Bert Blyleven.

Barry Larkin’s totals were third-highest, with 62.1% of the vote (short of the 75% needed, but in good shape to get in a few years down the road); Jack Morris managed 53.5%, Lee Smith 45.3% (…seriously?), and Jeff Bagwell 41.7%, so get ready to have that fun discussion all over again next year. You can see the full results over at the BBWAA’s high-tech website of the future.

According to Jay Jaffe’s JAWS system and series of articles over at Baseball Prospectus, there were eight deserving candidates on the ballot this year: Roberto Alomar, Jeff Bagwell, Bert Blyleven, Barry Larkin, Edgar Martinez, Mark McGwire, Tim Raines, and Alan Trammell. I wasn’t so sure about Raines and Trammell initially, but I’ve completely come around on Rock over the last year and I’m edging towards being convinced on Trammell. It’d help if the guy had a better nickname, which I believe is not a factor JAWS takes into consideration, but it really ought to be. That’s something I’ll have to bring up with Jay, and I won’t have to wait long because he’s chatting live over at BP this very moment.

For those of you who are sick of reading and debating about the Hall of Fame, exhale. For those who aren’t, have at it in the comments. What would your ballot look like?

Originally, blogging inherently meant not only being an outsider but an amateur. Now that the idiom has been co-opted by professionals in the mainstream, it is something different. Or, a blog can be many things–started by an amateur at home, or part of a reporter’s job. Being an amateur means anything goes and so a lot of blogs are not memorable, and many don’t last, but being an independent blogger also grants you a freedom that professional journalists don’t enjoy. I’ve found that the best bloggers have standards and are at least professional in their amateur approach.

In the baseball world, there is a select group of guys who were blogging when I started Bronx Banter back in 2002 that are still going–Geoff Young, Jon Weisman, Aaron Gleeman and David Pinto to name a few. Rich Lederer is one of that crowd. Ah, Rich. Woolly Bully himself. The man who relishes a good fight, a guy who isn’t afraid to piss people off. He’s got chutzpah, I’ll tell you that. We began an on-line friendship in 2003 when we both brought our blogs to all-baseball.com. And Rich has been campaigning for Bert Blyleven’s Hall of Fame candidacy ever since.

A bunch of the all-baseball crew met at the winter meetings in Anaheim back in 2004 (that’s Rich as the Incredible Hulk).  Here is how Alex Ciepley described Rich, a big, middle-aged guy who was the very opposite of the nerd-in-the-basement-blogger stereotype:

Rich’s Weekend Winter Meetings Beat was in full effect again Saturday morning. Fresh off an evening in which he had managed to both raise and lower Scott Boras’ ire, Rich was all smiles, eager for another day of baseball highs.

SI’s Tom Verducci was apparently a Lederer target, and I joined Rich, Jon, and Verducci in mid-conversation. Verducci has the glow of an athlete, a rare claim among the writers in the room. Steve Finley had the glow when walking through the lobby on Friday night. Matt Williams, standing alone outside the hotel’s glass doors, has the glow. Even the old-timers, Lou Piniella and Felipe Alou, have it. Verducci, too — if you didn’t know his gig you might think he was a retired outfielder looking for a job.

Verducci might not have known Rich’s gig, either, as Rich directed the conversation towards Verducci’s Hall of Fame ballot. I knew there was trouble ahead as soon as Verducci admitted he’ll only vote for a couple guys this year, and that some of Rich’s favorites weren’t among them.

Sandberg? Close but no cigar.

Blyleven? (Now the kicker.) Not even close.

For those who aren’t familiar with Rich’s player fetishes, Blyleven may top the list. He wrote a beautiful and memorable piece detailing Blyleven’s qualifications last year, and I braced myself when hearing Verducci say Blyleven was “never dominant” during his career. Did Rich’s hair just stand on end? Dum-dum-dum-dum-dee-du-wah. Here it came: 5th in career strikeouts. 9th in career shutouts. Top 20 in a host of other categories. Was Rich able to convince Verducci of the case for Blyleven, or is Rich himself only the lonely on this one?

(For what it’s worth, Verducci thinks Blyleven will get in today, though I don’t know if he was personally influenced at all by Rich’s arguments.)

I remember calling Rich at one point, maybe in 2005, and told him, “Hey, you might want to give this Blyleven thing a rest. You don’t want to be just known as the Blyleven guy.” But I was thinking about Rich as a professional writer and he never had any such aspirations. He is a hobbyist, albeit one with roots in the professional game (his father was a journalist as well as a public relations man for both the Dodgers and Angels). Rich took on the Blyleven cause because he honestly felt that the voting process for the Hall was not completely kosher.

Rich recently told John Paul Morosi of Fox Sports:

“The only problem I have with the word ‘campaign’ is that it makes it sound like this was orchestrated with Blyleven’s blessing, and that couldn’t be further from the case,” Lederer said over the phone this week. “I’ve talked with Bert, and I’ve emailed with Bert, but we’ve never even met in person.

“I’m not even sure how to describe it. I don’t know if ‘campaign’ is the right word or not — I’m kind of at a loss. It’s just something I got behind, because I felt he was very deserving. And this is a way for me to follow in the footsteps of my dad, to put to use my love of baseball and analysis. It’s been fun.”

…“The Internet flattens the world a little and allows someone like me to have a say, an audience, and indirectly participate in the discussion,” Rich Lederer said. “I enjoy that. If not for the Internet, it would be next to impossible for me to have an impact on those types of things. It’s been a great vehicle. People say there have been more words written about Bert’s candidacy than anyone else in the history of the Hall of Fame.”

Lederer is one of the spawn of Bill James (as are many contemporary baseball writers from Rob Neyer and Joe Sheehan to Joe Posnanski), using reason and data to build his case. He has been tireless in his advocacy of Blyleven–something I hope the pitcher appreciates. But I think Rich is after something more than just building a case for his guy, he wants the fundamental voting process to change, to be more considered and thorough. And because of the Internet and places like baseball-reference.com, the information is available. It’s foolish to think that all of the baseball writers will change their approach but some of them might.

Rich is not alone–Jay Jaffe, Jonah Keri, and Craig Calcaterra have helped lead the charge. Still, Rich put in the work and deserves kudos for his efforts. I was wrong when I told him to back off stumping for Blyleven. Not bad for a rank amateur!

Caught this on Hardball Talk: The BBWAA site has been hacked.

The halftime score at the Garden tonight: Knicks 72, Spurs 69.

Runnin’ and gunnin’. This is fun.

Final Score: Knicks 128, Spurs 115. Good night at the Garden against the best team in the NBA.

(Photo by Greg Fiume/Getty Images)

I have to admit that when I first saw the headlines that Orioles reliever Alfredo Simon had a warrant out on him in connection with a fatal shooting on New Year’s Eve, my first reaction was to make a crack along the lines of, well now nobody could say he wasn’t an intimidating presence on the mound. But I’m glad I refrained because now Simon has turned himself in and the more I read about the case, which is still fairly muddled at this point, the sadder it all seems. The shooting was first reported as taking place after a dispute but is now apparently being viewed as an accident, according to authorities, and exactly how it happened is fairly unclear – Simon himself says that it occurred while he was trying to break up a fight between two other people, but his lawyer told The Baltimore Sun that because Simon was firing into the air, he couldn’t have shot the victim in the chest, and that the bullet must have come from another gun. I, of course, have no idea what happened, except that  it wasn’t good.

The touching aspect of the article – at least, touching if we’re assuming that if Simon is guilty of anything,  the shooting was indeed an accident, however stupid – is that Simon’s teammates are stepping up to help. Miguel Tejada found Simon’s lawyer and is footing the bill, with some possible assistance from former teammate Julio Lugo.

Olivares’ representation of Simon is being bankrolled by former Orioles star Miguel Tejada, a compatriot who befriended Simon before being traded to the San Diego Padres in July. Tejada said by telephone Monday morning that he spoke with friends in the Dominican Republic to help him choose a firm that could best help Simon. Tejada said he expects to pick up the bill, although former Orioles infielder Julio Lugo also has taken an active role, he said, and may help with the expenses. Lugo accompanied Simon to the police station Monday.

“Alfredo is a kid I really love a lot,” Tejada said. “He is in trouble right now, and that’s what we do, we stick together. We wanted some big company attorneys, there are some good ones here in the Dominican and this is a special case.”

Tejada said he spoke with Simon on Sunday and that the pitcher is doing well, given the circumstances. “He is fine,” Tejada said. “He told me he doesn’t have anything to do with it, he is not the one to do it, and I believe him. I tell him I am with him and if there’s anything he needs, I am here.”

Lugo said he advised Simon to surrender after he had fled from the scene. “He is scared because he recognizes that he fired shots, although they went into the air,” Lugo said…

I was thinking that this was an impressive display of team loyalty, players putting their money where their mouths are and having each other’s backs when the chips are down. And then I remembered that Miguel Tejada is a grump who’s been tied to steroids and convicted of lying to congress, and Julio Lugo has been on my scumbag list since he was arrested for domestic violence back in 2003 (he was acquitted after his wife changed her story and testified on his behalf, but I’ll let you decide for yourself whether to believe that she hit her own head on a truck).

The moral of the story is, people are complicated.

The season for the New York Football Giants is on the line later this afternoon. Here’s wishing good things for Big Blue and all of their fans…

For today, anyway, let’s go Football:

"Mom, mom, take my picture next to the Rusty Kuntz statue!"

There are many reasons why I should never, ever be allowed to have a Hall of Fame vote.

For one thing, you know I would absolutely vote for players based on whether they had cool or funny names, based entirely on my own personal criteria. Welcome to the Hall, Wayne Terwilliger! I would work to establish a sort of Veteran’s Committee variant to ensure that historic greats like Cletus Elwood “Boots” Poffenburger and Bris “The Human Eyeball” Lord were not forgotten but instead enshrined in their deserved splendor.

I would also probably not be able to resist voting for Don Mattingly and indeed  pretty much any player who spent time on the Yankees roster between 1996 and 2001, not merely undeserving fan favorites like Paul O’Neill, Scott Brosius and Tino Martinez, but also, there’s a good chance, Graeme Lloyd, Chili Davis, Robin Ventura, maybe Brian Boehringer and quite possibly a bunch of players whose names I don’t even remember at this point. Do I really think Scott Brosius let alone Shane Spenser is a Hall of Famer? Of course not, but it’d be nice to do a little something for those guys, you know?

I guess there’s not really a way to throw anyone out of the Hall once they’re in, but I would try to change that and, in the meantime, regularly TP and egg the plaques of Tom Yawkey and Walter O’Malley, also occasionally drawing devil horns and lipstick and goatees on their bronzed faces. Actually, I guess there’s nothing stopping me from doing that now even without a Hall of Fame vote, except the fear of arrest. Little known fact: if you’re a Hall of Fame voter you legally cannot be arrested within Cooperstown city limits. It’s like diplomatic immunity. I’m pretty sure.

In addition, I would try to get the name officially changed to the Hall of Very Good just because it would piss people off so much.

Finally, please note that my complete failure to take the Hall seriously does not mean that I won’t sputter indignantly when the results are announced next week, because I absolutely will, especially if Jack Morris gets elected and Blylevyn does not, and also if I have to read about the Bagwell-steroid-suspicion mishegoss for another damn week. Indignant sputtering is one of life’s little pleasures and every baseball fan’s innate right, and I greatly look forward to it.